Formal Proposal

Our chosen topic for our documentary will be - Social media effects on
education. The reason why weve chosen this topic is because we can
relate easily to it as we have grown up in a generation where we are
constantly using technology and being introduced to new technology,
therefore it is a topic we have interest in as well as one we can relate to.
We shall be using a mixed documentary type, which includes interviews,
observation and narration. We chose to use this type as interviews and
observations are very important within a documentary to gather peoples
opinions and it also helps us look further into the topic. We shall be using
a voice over as our narration rather than a presenter, as a voice over fits
in with a mixed documentary.
The genre we have decided to use is to inform our audience of the various
impacts of social media but also investigate further into these
assumptions by interviewing experts and filming voxpops with students.
We shall also have some aspects in the documentary, which will entertain
the audience so that we keep their attention throughout.
Our target audience will be a wide target audience, as it will be aimed
mainly at students of school, college, university or any other type of
education. The vast majority of students use social media either on their
phones or computers and this could therefore create an interest for them
to watch the documentary, as it is a wide and popular topic. Our target
audience will also include parents of students as they would be interested
in the how their childrens education is potentially being impacted.
Teachers may also show an interest as they could be experiencing the
effects of social media on their students work in their jobs.
An ideal example of our target audience would be a 17-year-old female of
white ethnicity attending college, currently doing her first year of A-levels.
She uses her phone frequently to use social media such as twitter and
Facebook, and meets up with her friends every weekend. She is a hardworking student, however sometimes she doesnt meet all her college
deadlines due to distractions of social media and communicating with
friends.
Our documentary on the effects of social media on education will take a
linear structure where it will follow a timeline of events in chronological
order and will have a cause and effect narrative where an event or topic
leads onto a topic about the effect.
Our chosen channel for our documentary will be ITV1, airing at 8:00pm on
Monday nights and finishing at 9:00pm. We originally chose 9:00pm for
our starting time, but after researching the prime time for TV slots in the
UK, we found that 8pm-9pm received on average 24,000,000 viewers,
more than any other time slots.

For this documentary, we will need to conduct primary and secondary

research in order to receive the most valid statistics and views that we
can find, making our documentary as truthful, with the information we will
be presenting, as possible. The primary research that we will need to
conduct will consist of self-report methods such as a questionnaire. The
questionnaire will be handed out to a sample group that fits our target
audience, and the information we will withdraw from it will help us base
our documentary around what our target audience prefers. The
questionnaire will firstly ask about if they watch/like documentaries and
why, and will then go on to asking about how our audience uses social
media. These results will help us improve our documentary so that our
audience will be more interested as it will relate to them more.
We shall also need to conduct interviews with our experts an English or
Psychology teacher, the head teacher and an examiner. As these are
experts, it will gain trust in the audience to believe the experts are being
truthful as they are professionals. We will interview them in their office or
classroom so that the mise-en-scene reflects their professionalism. We
will also need to conduct voxpops of students around college to find out
views of the general public and we shall film these voxpops in areas where
social media is available e.g. the internet caf. This will then constantly
remind the audience of the aim and topic of the documentary. Both of
these will be important as they will help the audience conduct their own
opinion after hearing the opinions of the general public and the experts.
The secondary research we collect will consist of watching the news,
reading news articles online and reading blogs about effects of social
media to find useful and informative statistics. We will also search YouTube
for videos relating to social media to see the effects actually happen. This
would represent a wider part of the populations views.
Codes and conventions in a documentary are very important to include to
keep the audiences attention. Some codes and conventions that will be
included in our documentary are a voice over. This will narrate the
documentary as events happen to add more information and so the
documentary makes sense.
We will use archival footage such as old interviews on the topic of social
media to support our argument and show it has been an issue for a long
period of time. Background and actuality footage will also be used to show
the effects happening in the present, in college. The use of texts and titles
will be important when interviewing our experts or conducting our
voxpops to show who is talking. Giving the experts a title will also
emphasize their professionalism and gain further trust from the audience.
Background music will play when there is no speech or audio from a video
playing. This is so the documentary is more interesting and doesnt
become boring for the audience to watch, and video transitions such as
fade and dip to black/white will be put in between each clip for the same
purpose and to help reflect a smooth, linear structure.

Finally, exposition shall be included when introducing important

background information. It will help us to explain our theory and support
our argument.
There will be a number of resources required for the making and planning
of the documentary. We shall need a camera and tripod to record our
footage. Our phones on at all times so we can communicate effectively
within the group about tasks set. We will need risk assessments for each
area that we record in so that we know how to avoid any risks, and a
reccee list to keep track of where we shall be filming. We shall also
conduct a props list so that we have any mise-en-scene and props that we
need during the interviews, voxpops and background footage to reinforce
our topic.